


All the Same Again

by Chimaera-Writes (ChimaeraKitten)



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: M/M, Post-Thick as Thieves, Thick as Thieves Spoilers, also i'll be super sad, because he's one of my favs, but i won't probably, but like if return of the thief doesn't have Costis at all then this won't fit, idk where this came from, if i were too write a sequel it would be called 'always different', im bad at titles, shipping but it's like really tame, tag ramble over, trying to be canon-compliant with my best guess for the upcoming book, yes editing we do not die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 08:35:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16091963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChimaeraKitten/pseuds/Chimaera-Writes
Summary: On the way to war, Attolia, and the Mede, Kamet is rather braver than he believes himself capable of, and Costis is rather more wise.





	All the Same Again

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my google drive for like a month now and it's not going to get any better, so here's my first foray into the Queen's Thief fandom.

Kamet passed the messenger on the road.

An Attolian messenger in this out of the way spot wasn’t as uncommon as it could be, nor as uncommon as it had been before Kamet and Costis had moved in, but the sight still twisted his stomach in knots. He wasn’t due any correspondence, and the messenger hadn’t even looked at him.

Kamet told himself that there were any number of reasons an Attolian messenger might be in the area, reasons that didn’t have anything to do with the recent increase in Mede ships on the horizon.

He ran the rest of the way home.

Just as he had feared, he found Costis sitting on their bed while he pulled on his boots, packed saddlebags sitting to his left, and a letter bearing the king’s personal seal on the right.

“Kamet,” Costis said, having heard him enter, “You’re home early.”

Kamet did his best to hide his heavy panting. “I passed an Attolian messenger on the road.”

Costis tilted his head back, looking grieved. He passed over the letter. “I have to go.”

Kamet read over the letter. It was short, nearly illegible in the king’s handwriting, and exactly what Kamet had known it would be.

“I’m sorry,” Costis said.

“You swore an oath,” Kamet offered, knowing even as he said it that Costis would have obeyed this summons even without an oath to bind him.

“I did.”

Silence stretched in the air between them until Costis finished with his boots and stood. He kissed Kamet, hesitated, and then kissed him again. Kamet held precisely still both times, neither accepting no rejecting the affection. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe like there wasn’t an anvil sitting on his chest. He felt felt a hand caress the side of his face, then rest on his cheek.

“I’m sorry,” Costis said again. “I cannot fairly ask you to come with me, or even stay and wait on my return, but I also cannot stay. I have a duty to my King.”

Kamet reached up and covered Costis’s hand with his own. “Our King,” he said, and went to go pack.

 

* * *

 

Costis hadn’t meant to make Kamet come back with him. He’d wanted to be already leaving when his lover arrived home. He’d meant to say goodbye quickly, but with finality. He knew all to well his chances of surviving the war on the horizon. He never dreamed of pulling Kamet into this conflict, not after all they’d done to escape. Kamet was no warrior, and no great strategist of wars either. There should never have been a reason for the scholarly former slave to go anywhere near a battlefield. There should never have been a reason, but there was.

Costis hated being that reason.

And yet. And yet, Costis hadn't tried to stop him. Hadn’t told him to stay, hadn’t left while an entire saddle bag slowly filled with parchment and ink, hadn’t even made mention of the horrors that awaited them, surely, if Kamet came. He held his tongue out of selfishness and cowardice. Terrified of Kamet staying, terrified of Kamet going.

Costis hated that, too.

He held his tongue all the way onto the Attolian ship at the port. Held it halfway across the sea, held it even as he saw Kamet’s hands shake in a way that had nothing to do with the rolling of the boat. He held his tongue so long it turned to lead in his mouth.

Costis held his tongue right up until he woke to Kamet sobbing in the night, asking a different set of questions held back with a lead tongue.

 

* * *

 

Kamet muffled his sobs in his arms as best he could, wishing he’d just left the cabin as soon as he’d felt the first tear slide down his face. If Costis saw him like this, he would--

He would--

He would what? Laugh? Never. Try to send Kamet back with the ship, to hopefully avoid the fighting. Make promises he couldn't keep.

But not leave together, as Kamet wished. That was the one think he couldn’t do. Not for the first time, Kamet hated the Attolian’s honor and his love for his country and it’s monarchs. Kamet also hated that this was one of the reasons he loved Costis.

Life as a freeman, Kamet found, was complicated.

So he muffled his sobs, because the one thing he must not do was force Costis to choose, force Costis to send him away. That might break the both of them. It would certainly break Kamet, at least. Break him in ways that the well at the mill couldn’t, that cooking vegetable broth and waiting for Costis to wake up couldn't, that facing the King of Attolia and proclaiming that it was all his fault, always his fault, couldn’t.

He knew Costis was awake before he spoke, knew it not from movement or sound, but from the prickle up his spine and the loss of the even rhythm of breath that served as tempo for his sobs.

“Kamet?” Costis whispered.

Kamet turned away. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

There was a hand on his back, just resting there in the dark. “There is no need to apologize.”

But there was, the turmoil in his voice betrayed it.

“I am sorry all the same.”

“Is there anything I can--”

“Will you ever love me more than you love Attolia?” It was not what Kamet had meant to say, but he’d had to stop Costis from finishing the question, and the only way to ever prevent Costis from doing something was to cut deep, and hope he’d forgotten what he planned by the time he healed. Even that seldom worked.

Kamet hated that he loved that, too.

Costis had gone silent, shocked. His hand dropped away. Kamet worried he’d ruined everything. All that time, undone by a few words. Then Costis spoke.

“It’s not a matter of love.”

“Of course it is. You’d not march into hell for anything less.”

“No, It’s not,” Costis plowed on, bullheaded as always, “My King has my loyalty, you have my love. There is a difference. I’d march into hell for King and Country, yes, but yours would be the name on my lips as I went in.”

“It seems the same to me.”

“I wouldn’t march into hell for you.”

Kamet looked at him, or at where he thought he was in the darkness, shocked.

“Unless, of course,” Costis continued, as if there weren't shock like ice in Kamet’s veins, “It were to get you back.”

The shock settled into something warmer, stilling beneath his breastbone. He thought of the story they’d shared, so long ago. The ever present fear that had stuffed his senses and clung to his skin since passing the messenger on the road dimmed just slightly, and Kamet realized that perhaps less of it was simple mortal fear than he realized. He had been scared, deep down, that he’d lose Costis to Attolia and Attolis even if they both survived the coming war.

They exchanged no more words that night. With the help of Costis’s warm hands and steady breathing, Kamet soon drifted into an easy sleep.

 

* * *

 

Though Costis ought to have watched for the first glimpses he could get of his home, he had eyes only for Kamet as they approached the Attolian dock. He was looking for any hesitation, any reason to send his lover as far away as he could on the fastest ship he could find. He was, perhaps, as terrified to find it as he was praying for it to exist.

He found nothing, either way. Warriness, certainly, even fear still, but no desire to turn away.

“You are certain?” Costis asked, hopeful and pained at the same time.

“Yes.”

“I never meant to make you--”

“You made me do nothing. I choose. Is it not the right of a freeman to choose?” The confidence in the words was false, but unwavering.

Costis closed his mouth. Now, in daylight with the previous night’s revelations digested, Kamet seemed every bit the haughty scholar who once corrected Costis on the way he pronounced ‘shoe’ in his own language, and not a bit the fearful escaped slave.

“If you are certain.”

“I am. We are better together.”

“Immakuk and Ennikar?”

“The very same.”

  
  



End file.
